ONCE UPON A TIME IN GIBSONS The Town of Gibsons Heritage ...

Documents archived at the Sunshine Coast Museum as part of the Kiwanis Club’s legacy indicate that
even though much of the area was undeveloped at the time of transfer, the Trustees were aware of the
need for dedicated parkland as a reserve against future development - and looked to Vancouver’s Stanley
Park as a model in this regard. The documents cite the foresightedness of Trustees R. Burns, G. Grey,
Messrs. MacAfee, MacNicol, Wilson and Ballentine and the Parks Development Committee, Kiwanis
Club, Kinsmen Club, Royal Canadian Legion, Centennial Committee and Elphinstone’s high school
students as being “as faithful to this trust as the original men could have wished.”
At the time of the Park’s initial dedication in 1967, the Kiwanis Club placed a two-ton boulder to serve
as a cairn over a time capsule with mementos of the Canadian Centennial year and erected a fl agpole
nearby.
Subsequently, the Town installed sewers and storm drains along Park Road, and the work required the
moving of the cairn and fl agpole. The plaque was removed from the cairn and placed in the Town Hall.
In the midst of the confusion of construction on site and at the Town Hall, the cairn and fl agpole were
lost and the plaque disappeared.
Demonstrating their “faithfulness to their trust” as former members of the Kiwanis Club and/or
Centennial Committee, Bill Wright, Cecil Chamberlin and Bernice Chamberlin lobbied for over
two decades for a restored cairn and fl agpole and to ensure the park was correctly termed “Brothers
Memorial Park.”
In 2004 - the 60th anniversary year of the Kiwanis Club’s establishment in Gibsons - the Town installed
a new time capsule and cairn in a specially-created entry plaza, duplicating the original plaque from
drawings and photographs provided by Bill Wright. The Park was offi cially rededicated as Brothers
Memorial Park, with the Chamberlins and Bill Wright proudly in attendance. The Chamberlins have
since donated a second fl agpole to the site.
Gibsons Heritage Inventory and Register 87
photos by Going Coastal Communications Group, 2003